I'm starting with Berkeley for my Four Twinn Rescue project. I'm starting with her because she was the first of the four My Twinn rescues I collected starting in late 2015. She wasn't exactly a rescue then however; she was new. I bought her as My Twinn was closing its doors and dropping prices on all its 18" dolls. At that time she had bright blue eyes and I thought they were the prettiest ever. Here she is the day she arrived from My Twinn a few years ago.

Here she is with a few of the other 18" Twinns I was collecting during the closeout sale.

But about a year later, I noticed her eyes were fading and turning a ghostly purple-white. Which was pretty sad, because originally her eyes were really striking. Apparently this is not uncommon with My Twinn dolls, and seems to affect both 18" and 23" models.

So I decided then I was going to replace Berkeley's eyes, and while I was at it, I figured I'd remake her too. I'd recently come across some images of some 23" My Twinn Asian dolls and hoped to try something similar with Berkeley.

From what I've read, Berkeley was designed as an Asian mold so I took a shot at it, although I originally wanted an 18" version of Pearl or Kim.

I got lucky. Right about the time I decided to re-do Berk, an 18" Kim showed up on eBay, followed by an 18" Pearl not long after. I nabbed them both! Count my lucky stars!

Welp, the only place left to go after this was to find an 18" Cai, which would essentially complete my collection of all four 18" Asian My Twinn face molds. It took me about two years to collect all four dolls at affordable prices, but I finally did it.

That's when I got to work.

I actually started working on this project a little over a year ago, beginning with replacing Berk's ghostly eyes with light brown/ hazel eyes. I thought the contrast would look good with her black hair.

Once I got the eyes in however, I wasn't so sure. Something about them did not look right to me.

Looking back, I can imagine if I'd gone ahead and added the eyelashes, the eyes might have ended up looking okay. But at the time, the more I looked at those eyes, the less I liked them.

So I set Berkeley aside, thinking I needed some time to decide if I wanted to keep these eyes or not. It was months before I got back to her, at which point I'd been staring down her eyes for a while and decided I didn't like them at all and opted for dark brown.

And all that wrestling around with poor Berk's head to get eyes in and out of it kind of mussed up her hair too.

I won't lie; combing out all those curls seemed really daunting to me as most of my time and energy was expended toward developing Dollmaker. So Berkeley and her friends went back to the shelf and sat some more.

But soon 2019 rolled around, and enough was enough. I had a look at the Twinns, reasoned Berkeley has been waiting the longest ( and seemed like the easiest to fix--all she needed were eyelashes and a hair comb) so I got to work on her first.

I was satisfied with the eye color, so I left that as it was. Meanwhile, her hair was pretty tangled not to mention dusty, so washing/ combing it was high on my list. I also wanted to straighten the curls as the hair would be much easier to work with.

Always protect the cloth body! Here's Berk readying for her wash with my cutting-edge high-tech cloth body protector: a plastic bag with an elastic around the neck. ;)

That's better! Dust and lint gone.

Unfortunately the tangles were still there. I don't normally use hair conditioner on doll hair, as I find it doesn't always soften and smooth the hair like it does human hair, and I'm not sure the residue is good for the synthetic fiber. So I just washed it and hoped I'd be able to get a comb through it without too much grief.

Nope. It was actually as hard and more time consuming than I had feared. After two or three hours of trying my best for minimal pulling and flat-ironing strand after small strand, I'd gotten through about half of it. Here's a commemorative photo.

Berkeley looks like she's saying "How much longer?"

Combing out Berk's hair really took like most of the day, off and on, to get through nearly all of it.

By evening I had all but one curl left to do. I was pretty tired however and that one curl felt like one curl too many lol. So I called it for the day.

By next morning, Berkeley's hair was finally done.

It was super long when straightened, actually longer than I need for it to be. Not to mention the ends were kind of fuzzy and dry, so I decided I'd trim the hair to just above her ankles.

Since the hair was so long, I put Berk on a stand near the edge of my work table, and allowed the hair to hang over the edge. That made it easier to trim evenly. Her My Twinn friends looked on. . .

Berkeley's particular wig is kind of textured. It reminds me a bit of My American Girl doll #42 hair, though maybe slightly less texured and a little more wiry. It's not super smooth or straight, but it does feel kind of like real hair, more than some of the super shiny AG doll hair.

My Twinn wigs seem to vary, with maybe the later Twinn wigs not being as nice as the earlier wigs. For example, both my Kim's and Pearl's wigs are very nice--Pearl's especially. it's super silky and thick and doesn't tangle easily. Is she an earlier doll? On the other hand, Berk's is a little rougher. But it's decent enough.

Snip! The first of the fuzzier ends gone.

After the hair was trimmed, it still felt a bit wiry and flyaway, so I pinned a towel around Berk's shoulders and used a diluted conditioner-and-water spritz on her hair to see if it would calm it down (it didn't very much).

Then I took the flat iron to it again, trying to get a slightly straighter, smoother look, especially as she still had some lingering waves.

Then I curled the ends under just slightly, for a more natural look.

Looking good! Now alls I have to do is let the hair dry so I can start on her face.

In Part II of my Fixing Berkeley post I'll address just that, including the process of giving her new eyelashes and enhancing her existing eyebrows and face paint.

Fixing Berkeley Part II